I am about to face the Holy one, blessed be He, and justify my sojourn on the world. If He will ask me: Zussye why were you not like Moses?  I shall respond, because you did not grant me the powers you granted Moses.  He will ask me: Zussye, why were you not like Rabbi Akiba?  I shall respond because you did not grant me the powers you granted Rabbi Akiba.  But the Almighty will not ask me why I was not like Moses or why I was not like Rabbi Akiba.  The Almighty will ask me: Zussye, why were you not like Zussye, why did you not fulfill the potential which was Zussye, and it is for this question that I tremble.
            - Rav Zussye, the chassidic saint of Tarnifal before his death

Something inside each of us is seeking to manifest, to emerge, to birth. A potential, a gift, a uniqueness. It could be a creative work, it could be a contribution to the lives of others. It is, in some way, a continuity, a current of energy, a life force seeking to grow.

How would you describe the current of energy, the life force inside you, that is seeking to grow? What do you do to nurture that relationship? How you nurture that relationship will determine the quality of your life.

What we call fate does not come to us from outside; it goes forth from within us.
     - Rainer Maria Rilke

There are many pathways in this life and it doesn't matter which one you take, for they all have a common destination, and that is the grave.  But some paths give you energy and some take it away.  
      - Cervantes

On some paths energy builds, on some it dissipates.

All paths lead nowhere, but all are worth following when they "have heart"--when its where the energy wants to go.
     - Border Crossings, A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge

My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.

     - Carl Jung, from the Prologue to Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

When you have found your right work, and applied yourself to it, doors open and things fall into place. Your inner life gains from the work in the world, and your work gains from your inner life.

I didn't trust it for a moment but I drank it anyway
The wine of my own poetry
It gave me the daring
to take hold of the darkness
and tear it into little pieces.
     - Lalla Ded, woman poet of 14th century India.

The surest way of knowing that you’ve found your work is feeling blessed by it. Not every day or even every week, but overall you know your work gives you energy and you know it adds something special or crucial to the lives of others. Life consists of both giving and taking. What can you give that will contribute beauty and love to your life, and the lives of others?

Journaling Questions:

In a state of deep, relaxed awareness, imagine energy as an entity.

Ask your energy where it wants to go. Where will the energy multiply? Where will your life force gain momentum?

Life is a desperate struggle to be in fact that which we are in design.
- José Ortega y Gasset

I am a nomad, not a farmer. I am an adorer of the unfaithful, the changing, the fantastic. . . .
Good luck to the farmer! Good luck to the man who owns this place, the man who works it, the faithful, the virtuous! I can love him, I can revere him, I can envy him. But I have wasted half my life trying to live his life. I wanted to be something that I was not. I even wanted to be a poet and a middle class person at the same time. I wanted to be an artist and a man of fantasy, but I also wanted to be a good man, a man at home. It all went on for a long time, till I knew that a man cannot be both and have both, that I am a nomad and not a farmer, a man who searches and not a man who keeps. A long time I castigated myself before gods and laws which were only idols for me. That was what I did wrong, my anguish, my complicity in the world’s pain. I increased the world’s guilt and anguish, by doing violence to myself, by not daring to walk toward my own salvation. The way to salvation leads neither to the left nor the right: it leads into your own heart, and there alone is God, and there alone is peace.
            - Herman Hesse, Wandering